There exists a significant static field inhomogeneity
for breast MRI related to the shape of the breast and the susceptibility
difference at air/tissue interfaces. Field inhomogeneity can cause imaging
artifacts or failure in fat suppression, especially when spectral-selective fat
suppression methods are used. For bilateral breast MRI, the large field
variation over the two breast volumes makes robust fat suppression more
difficult. We compared fat suppression by using standard shims and independent
shims of each breast, incorporated with a dual-band spectral-spatial pulse. Our
experiments show that independent shims provide improved fat suppression
compared to standard shims.